Re: Thoughts on the left hand sidebar

[Ross Smith <myxiplx googlemail com>]

>> > As far as your proposals:
>> >
>> > 1.       This will make it too cluttered
>> >
>> > 2.       The sidebar was created to remove these functions from the top
>> > panel so we remove this option.
>>
>> Can I ask what functions are being moved to the sidebar?  Personally
>> I'm not a fan of the sidebar, especially since I think gnome-shell is
>> making it possible to have a much tidier interface.  It looks to me
>> like a single panel can do everything that's needed, with plenty of
>> free space on it too.
>
> It is not about space but organisation of the desktop. By moving all the
> functionality in the top part of the screen you will be less effective
> because humans like to separate things in groups. By making a sidebar
> (that would possibly hide or be styled nice) you have another logical
> and intuitive place (still another shelf) to set up you custom files and
> applications. Thus you can guess I'm strongly FOR the sidebar.

Hmm, ok, I can see the benefit for pinning favorite items.  In that
case I'd like it hidden by default (with a stub visible), and on the
middle left of the screen.

As just a quick place to add your custom launchers & shortcuts I can
see the use.  It might be nice to be able to right-click any item in
the gnome-shell overlay and select 'add to sidebar'.

That would let you quickly add:
- programs
- documents
- places
- workspaces
- the search bar
- the 'add workspace' button

You could also keep the sidebar stub visible when the overlay is
activated, and allow dragging these elements to it as well.

The only downside to it is that I think it detracts from using the
overlay for launching items.

That's why I'd like it hidden by default - so people have chance to
adjust to using the overlay first, rather than just dumping things on
the sidebar and using that instead of taking the time to get used to
the overlay.